The ‘joys’ of being the youngest

There is a lot to be said for what we may experience due to birth order in our family.. I am the youngest of four and I have quiet a number of friends who were the youngest in their family who resonate with me.. That said when I got married I married the oldest of four, my husband had three younger sisters just like my older brother.

There is a saying in AA that in a traumatising family Dad hits or hurts Mum, Mum takes that out on the older kids and they then pass the trauma onto the youngest (mind you it may more likely be Mum hitting or hurting Dad in more coverts ways). The youngest may then kick the dog or torture an animal.. I know its a pretty dark scenario and one empaths with be horrified by, since we young ones would be more likely to be cuddling the dog or escaping into nature to climb our favorite tree and find refuge with the birds or open blue sky, or seeking our healing in the imaginative worlds.

In family systems theory young child is often the mascot.. They often feel the need to unify the splintered family, they may also be the observer and are in the unique position of learning from watching the older ones make mistakes.. I feel for my brother in this regard as the oldest.. He very much carried the hero/successful one role, the scapegoat role sadly got passed on to my second sibling, my sister Judith who died in 2014. She managed to ‘escape’ the family for a time after marrying but she married into a family also riven with neglect/survival/abandonment issues and was indeed abandoned by her ex husband after her haemorrahge in 1980 she had that after trying to come back into the family and compete to be seen by taking on a very stressful interior design business while abusing alcohol and smoking. I see her has having carried a lot of the trauma that went down in the ancestral line on my Mum’s side even to the degree she married a man from the country our ancestors migrated to in 1874.

As for my third sister she just got lost.. She and my brother bonded with Mum and Dad respectively, both sets ended up in businesses together and my sister’s ex husband also got involved in that business. After my Dad died in 1985 a separation did come about, Mum stopped working and buried her grief.. My sister went on in the business but after her husband cut those ties she foundered really in trying to find a new place to put her energy, especially after her two boys began to make healthy lives of their own… Now I do feel so much for my sister..I feel her loneliness at times, I feel her lostness and I see how her beingness got subtly erased by the family as well as by her ex husband who could not stand by her at a time of great vulnerability when so much was breaking open.. Still have also had to feel and fall into my own sense of lostness that may often eclipse my truer self when I try to move outside of the mascot or ‘unifier’ or ‘saviour’ role I have taken on at times in our family.

God or my Higher Power always reminds me that I am more than just my role in life, and yet a role can be an important thing.. its a carrier of energy for us….just as Carl Jung said ; the persona can be a way of being in the world but inside of us and behind that role or mask may also exist a place of shades and shadows as well as of gold and untapped potential we may only begin to lift the lid on in later life after having gone through and endured so much stripping away of layers and of loss.

I will probably always have a stronger identification with fourth children or youngest children in my life…last year I got approached by two young African boys who lost their Mums and wanted me to adopt them or step into a mothering role.. part of me balked at this, still having felt so young in one part of myself as well as unparented. I then question did my spirit or soul attract them as a reflection of the young undeveloped masculine side of myself thirsty for positive mothering and fathering as well as strong grounded healthy self esteeem with good solid boundaries? Who knows the answer? Maybe only God. And yet I can stay open and I can also thank my lucky stars for the ‘gift’ of being the youngest in my family.. Maybe things may have been even tougher for me in another role..tough as they were as the baby and struggling so hard to be seen for who I really was and what I really needed, hidden down so very deep inside.